Literary Realism in Editha :: William Dean Howells Papers

Literary Realism in EdithaAfter World War I, American people and the authors among them were disillusi bingled by the effects that war had on their society. America required a literary productions that would expound what had happened and what was happening to their society. The realistic movement of the late 19th vitamin C saw authors accurately depict breeding and its problems. This realistic movement evolved because of numerous changes and transitions in American culture. In the late 1800s, the United States was experiencing swift branch and change because of a changing economy, society, and culture. The increase of immigrants into America was one of the reasons. Realists endeavored to crack a comprehensive picture of modern life by bountying the spotless picture. The true definition of literary naive realism as defined by Encyclopedia Britannica is an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or sentimentalist subjectivity. Although realism is not limited to any one-century or group of writers, it is closely often associated with the literary movement in 19th-century France, specifically with the French novelists Flaubert and Balzac. George Eliot introduced realism into England, and William doyen Howells introduced it into the United States. Realism has been chiefly concerned with the commonplaces of everyday life among the middle and lower classes, where character is a product of social factors and surround is the integral element in the dramatic complications.In relation to that, William Dean Howells, while opposing idealization, made his comic criticisms of society. He did this by compare and contrasting American culture with those of other countries. He did not sweat to give one view of life but instead try to show the different classes, manners, and stratification of life in America. He believed that novels should present life as it is, not as it might be. Howells was a whizz of realism in American literat ure. He has written more than one hundred books. Among them is The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), A Modern Instance (1882), A Boys town (1890) and My Year in a Log Cabin (1893). Throughout his writings, Howells attempts to devise his characters real with faults and fears as are commonly found in reality. Howells utilizes literary realism in his short story Editha to communicate the reality of war and to portray the romanticism Americans had created around the concept of war.